NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

Jackie Rawlings Riverside California — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:03:15 GMT

Chris things are really getting good for the Middle East. Citigroup Inc.'s loan from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is interesting look for a buy out. More American companies will look to the Middle East for money and soon Chris the Middle East will be the owners of American companies and the major share holders. This Administration has make greed the US policy and anyone can be brought.

We will have a recession and it will not be like the past. Americans have credit cards and it's crazy. Millions of people are losing their homes because a company used fraud to sign home loans, notice now charges against the crooks. When the Leaders steal it flows all the way down. This is the results of a 7 year crime wave and now that's it coming to an end you see people taking the money and running as fast as they can.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

t disante, tucson AZ — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:16:46 GMT

Nature abhors a vacuum and so there is now a blogosphere for a few reasons:

1) The barrier to entry is now low-to-nonexistent.
2) An expert in something (as so few journalists are) can comment and critique with ease.
3) The MSM is way too concerned with its stock price, leading to more spin, entertainment, infotainment, power-stenography (all non-journalism...and even Robt Wodward has succumbed).
4) The right-wing has been very successful at classic bully-boy propaganda. Bill Moyers has reported on this well. Thus their outrageousness has moved the center to the right and people like Joe Klein have been nominated to be the so-called liberal; and Dennis Kucinic has been nominated to be the new loony.

It's all very sad. Perhaps you can report on why ABC has not corrected or investigated their own anthrax fraud-story.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

Squash, Portland, Or — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:18:33 GMT

Chris,
I now get most of my news and analysis from the blogs. I trust their reporting more than the MSM, what with its devotion to fake objectivity.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

DF, State College, Penn State — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:37:22 GMT

Hi Chris,

There are many of us out here who would love to hear more about the "nasty resonance" you experienced in the NBC newsroom while ABC was airing its false and misleading "Iraq Anthrax" stories back in 2001. Care to elaborate?

Cheers,
Derek

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

lambert strether — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:17:19 GMT

Well said on Greenwald. Thanks. My only nit to pick is with "fairly brutal."

I would say "brutal, but fair."

[rimshot. laughter]

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

Joel Patterson, Cambridge, MA — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:19:40 GMT

" raising the issue of a false story one of our competitors ran with back in 2001, which had a particularly nasty resonance in our newsroom-- and for which there was never an apology or any accountability"

Chris, clear up something for me, a non-newsroom person. Does "having a nasty resonance" mean the story felt true in your gut, as opposed to being something you could confirm from multiple sources? Or does it refer to a sense of outrage among NBC people found an anthrax letter in their mailroom and wanted retribution for the offender?

Or both?

I was a physics major, and the word "resonance" doesn't mean the same thing to me as it does to non-scientists, so I just want to clarify the metaphor here.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

Larry Kwart — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:24:05 GMT

Thanks very much for the mentions of Glenn Greenwald, DailyHowler, and MediaMatters. These people and their cohorts (such as the now defunct MediaWhoresOnline) have kept me (relatively) sane over the past 7 years. These are the folks challenging the conventional 'wisdom', doing the real leg work of journalism. These are not millionaire pundits sucking up to Jack Welch, Sumner Redstone, and Walter Isaacson. And as regards Greenspan, I held some bank stocks, which I sold three years ago, after reading Elaine Supkis' blog. If I could see the banking troubles coming, then surely Grenspan could. He's thinking that if he repeats his no-nothing mantra enough, then maybe the shriveled, dessicated remains of his conscience will be still.
BTW, I also knew that there were no WMD in Iraq before the invasion, because I read Scott Ritter's and others' reports...on the internet.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

sy, New York — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:52:59 GMT

"[I]t's rather telling that the calling-out is coming from the blogosphere and not the actual Democrats who Klein misrepresented. Maybe that's why there is a blogosphere to begin with."

Point taken Chris. But there is a big difference between reporting facts versus repeating partisan spin. Journalists are supposed to be intimately familiar with the distinction. For example, I assume your digression about a "false story one of [y]our competitors ran with back in 2001 which had a particularly nasty resonance in our newsroom" is intended to make that point. But it degrades to just false (faux/Fox) outrage when journalists do not regularly self-police their trade. Its gets even worse if you have to go back almost seven years to find a false news story that got your newsroom angry about the denigration of their profession.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

global yokel — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:11:13 GMT

Chris,

I appreciate that you refer to Glenn Greenwald's post in a way that is productive, and not defensive. A lot of us out here in the provinces are about ready to scream and pull our hair out over the godawful performance of the MSM, especially during the Reign of Bush. Greenwald's meticulous documentation of the errors and bias to be found in our most prominent news sources is indispensable reading.

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

D Bartolf, Bowbells, ND — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:32:17 GMT

>The point is, journalists, particularly in Washington, aren't going to be able to repeat partisan spin that contains falsehoods as analysis without being called on it anymore.

And, yet, Mr. Klein remains gainfully employed. What does it take to be fired from a Beltway Gang gig?

NUTHIN' BUT 'NET: OIL MONEY TO THE RESCUE?

Chris Colvin — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:55:41 GMT

@Derek, Joel Patterson

The nasty resonance in our newsroom I referred to was anger that, at the time, ABC's reporting on this did not pass the smell test. Our own reporters and correspondents assigned to this story were, as you'd imagine, working extremely hard to try to get to the bottom of the anthrax attacks. The claims that Ross made, especially about bentonite somehow being a signature of Iraqi weaponization, were immediately shot down by the people our team was talking to. (Glenn Greenwald had an interesting dialogue with a commenter on this very subject.) ABC continued to run with the story for days. We felt they were blatantly wrong. And we were quite emotional at the time, given that two of our colleagues (one with a small child at home) had been diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax, and we were operating out of a temporary newsroom as ours was inhabited by HazMat teams who were disposing of the collective contents of all our desks. What we were interested in was figuring out who was really behind those heinous attacks, a question that, maddeningly, has still not been answered.